


New Demons

by botanistlester (Skeletonflowers)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: AU, M/M, Phan - Freeform, Phandom - Freeform, Phanfiction, Religion, pastel!dan, punk!phil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 02:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4245504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skeletonflowers/pseuds/botanistlester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Punk!Phil is forced to go to a church group where he meets Pastel!Dan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Demons

Phil is not religious. He understands why some people are, of course, but he was never able to grasp the whole point of religion besides the fact that you could literally just throw all of your problems onto a celestial being until you felt like you were being ‘forgiven’ for all the wrong you’ve done in your life. 

But the point is that Phil is not religious because why would he believe in a higher power who may or may not be real when he could just believe in himself? When he’s having a hard time, it’s him that is going to find the solution and fix the problem, not some God who had over seven billion other people he’s supposedly looking after. 

 

Maybe, just maybe, he would have been religious if he hadn’t been told by several people that God doesn’t love him because he prefered sticking his dick into other boys (which doesn’t make sense because didn’t Jesus forgive literally everyone who has done him wrong? What makes Phil any less of a person just because he loves people with his own genitals?). 

His parents, sadly, were one of those people. He remembered sitting them down when he was only fourteen, looking them straight in the eyes, and saying, “I like men.”

It was quiet for a few moments before his mum stood up and ushered out of the room, father following closely behind after giving him a sour look. They hadn’t talked to him for a few days before his mum sat him down and said, “God will forgive you for your sins if you pray every night. Just don’t act on those feelings else you will be going to Hell.”

That was the first night Phil had tried a cigarrette. He bummed it off of some eighteen year old standing outside of Tesco, and the fumes had filled his lungs and made his head feel fuzzy and he coughed up a lung, but afterwards he felt as if all of his stress had melted away, out through his nose and into the air, and he returned home that night with a package of Marlboros and a smile. 

It had only got worse from there. Every night, his parents said a prayer for him at the dinner table, asking God to help him be rid of his sins and begging this being for the forgiveness that Phil didn’t even want. He liked the way he was, he liked how some boys were masculine with facial hair and large muscles while others were petite and had rounded cheekbones and soft hair. Why would he want to change if he’s known he was 100% gay ever since he was only seven years old and had his first crush on his best friend at the time? The fact is that he isn’t going to change any soon, so why not love himself and the heart and body that he was blessed with from birth?

He sort of melted into a different sort of personality after that. He started smoking one cigarrette a day, before it quickly went to half a pack and then a full one per day. Once that wasn’t enough to dull the pain from his parents, he quickly learned that alcohol made him feel bubbly in his stomach and made him giggle at literally anything. The only problem with alcohol is that he wakes up with a pounding headache and once he woke up naked next to an older man, and the rest of the day he was wondering if he was still a virgin or not. 

So then he pierced his ears. His father called him a ‘faggot’ then and told him to take them out because only girls had earrings, but he didn’t, and he gradually stretched them until he had big holes in his lobes that he could stick his finger through. His parents were obviously distasteful of them, which is why he enjoyed going down to dinner with them sometimes with pencils in his lobes. 

At the age of sixteen, he grew his hair out and dyed it black. That was also when he tried to experiment with eyeliner, but that just made him look like a twat so he ended up ditching it after three months. 

When he was seventeen, he got his first tattoo, a triangle on his right forearm that had the rainbow contained in it. “You can pray the gay away as much as you want,” Phil told his parents when he showed them, “but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a part of me that I love.”

By the time he was eighteen, he had five tattoos in total, and his parents were completely adamant that it was the devil causing him to behave like this. When he told them that it was actually a product of the hurt they’ve caused him, they grew quiet and his father took a deep breath through his nose before saying, “Your mother and I have been discussing and we agree it’s time for us to intervene.” Phil narrowed his eyes while his dad continued, anger balling inside of him. “You will attend a church youth group for two days every week, Sunday and Wednesday. If you refuse, you will no longer be living with us. Understood?”

“What the actual fuck!” Phil screamed, balling his fists and running one through his hair. “You’re being completely illogical! I like the way I am, I’m sorry you can’t fucking accept that but it’s true! You have this damned ‘holier than thou’ attitude like you’re doing everything in the name of the Lord, but tell me this: Would Jesus be proud of the way you’ve been treating me for the past four years of my life?! Haven’t you ever heard of ‘Love thy neighbor’?!”

“Phil-.”

“No! I don’t want to hear it. I’ll go to your stupid fucking youth group, but just know, you are hurting me more than you know.”

Which is how he’s here, on a Sunday night, listening to some pastor preaching about Jesus with a bunch of other kids his age and even younger. It’s obvious that he doesn’t fit in with his dyed hair and his stretched ears and tattoos, but he couldn’t care less and slinked lower in his seat. 

“-Jesus said, ‘Take this, all of you, and eat from it, for this is my body which will be given up for you.’” 

Phil yawned into his palm and rolled his eyes, trying to stay awake enough that he wouldn’t be humiliated when he woke up to find that this dumb group was ended, but a voice in his ear interrupted his yawn. 

“Glad to see I’m not the only one struggling to stay awake.”

Phil turned, blinking when he caught sight of the boy next to him. For a moment, his breath was completely lost because of how absolutely beautiful this boy was, and he was confused how he hadn’t even seen him when such an angle was sitting right next to him. This boy, whoever he was, had soft brown hair in an identical fringe to Phil’s that was adorned with a white flower crown. He had on a pastel pink jumper that had a cartoon of a slice of pizza on it, white skinny jeans, and a pair of lavender TOMS. There was also a large dimple in one of his cheeks that made Phil’s cheeks turn a slight shade of pink. 

“Er, yeah,” Phil muttered back awkwardly, biting his lip to stop himself from saying anything embarrassing.

Pastel Boy (PB for short, fitting since he kind of resembled Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time) smirked at him, and Phil saw his dark chocolate eyes glance down at Phil’s arms, taking in the triangle tattoo, as well as the tattoo on his wrist of Phil’s cat that died a year ago. “You don’t look like the type of guy to be in a youth group. No offense.”

Phil rolled his eyes and let out a chuckle, taking a piece of bread and paper cup of wine (*cough* grape juice *cough*) from a plate as it was passed around. “Well, you’re exactly the type of person I would expect to find here. No offense.”

PB laughed loudly and popped the bread in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “Mum wanted to prove to her friends that even gay people could be religious, I suppose.”

Phil choked on his grape juice, spluttering loudly as he tried to stop from crying pathetically. PB snickered while he patted Phil on the back to help him dislodge the drink. There were no doubt several glares directed at them, but Phil tried not to mind those as he was somewhat used to it. “Sorry, sorry. Just didn’t expect that one.” He took a deep breath before chewing slowly on the bread as well. “I’m Phil, by the way.”

“Doesn’t seem very punk rock of a name.” PB grinned, and Phil saw the equivalent of sunshine erupt from that smile. “I’m Dan.” He didn’t wait for Phil’s response as he sat back, watching as the pastor began walking back down the aisle, signalling that mass had ended, then he stood up, looking down at Phil expectantly. “Will I see you on Wednesday?”

“Er- yeah. Yeah, I mean, I’m being forced to, so.” 

Dan’s smile grew and he patted Phil on the back with a slender hand that Phil kind of just wanted to hold. “Great! I can’t wait. And don’t worry, youth group isn’t as bad as it seems. It’s kind of fun once you realize that everyone here has problems they’re trying to sort out, whether it be at home or inside of themselves.” 

He left, and Phil was left to gaze after him, wondering what his parents would think if they knew church had made him gayer, if that was even possible. 

Not like he would tell them, for fear that he would never be able to see Dan again. 

Wednesday was much of the same, except for the fact that the youth group planned to go to some pizza place after mass, which Dan happily forced Phil to go to (although is it really being forced if Phil wanted to go only if to spend more time with the pastel boy?). Speaking of Dan, he was wearing a very soft blue vest adorned with an ice cream cone on it, along with lavender skinny jeans, white boots, and a lavender bandana which Phil wondered how he didn’t look like a complete twat when wearing it.

On the way to the pizza place, Phil had pulled out a cigarrette because his hands were beginning to shake since he hadn’t had one in an hour, and Dan rolled his eyes. “Smoking doesn’t make you seem cool, you know. It just makes you look like kind of a douche, actually.”

Phil took a drag and stayed quiet for a moment before responding. “I started smoking when I was fourteen because my parents told me to pray to God every night if I wanted to be forgiven for being gay.”

He saw Dan blink out of the corner of his eye and gape at him before his cigarrette was ripped out of his mouth and replaced with Dan’s. Dan took a drag and wrinkled his nose in disgust before handing it back. “That’s disgusting, for one. For two, you shouldn’t become dependant on things to make yourself feel better, that’s stupid and you should deal with them by yourself without material things that are bad for your health. And lastly, your parents are wrong. People disobey the bible all the time, because the bible was written thousands of years ago. Things change with time. These things were written in the Old Testament, which is called ‘OLD’ for a reason. Because it doesn’t really apply anymore. Also in the Old Testament is where it states that divorce, adultery, and hair cuts should be punished. Tattoos as well. You can’t just pick and cut things that you agree with, either go big or go home. It’s not the 1700’s anymore.”

Phil smiled at Dan, somewhat watery, but he felt some sort of relief with his words, because at least someone else had the same thoughts that he did, and it was refreshing in the best of ways. He wanted to just take Dan into his arms and never let go. “Thank you.” He looked at the cigarrette in his hands, weighing the words that had come out of Dan’s mouth about his ‘stupid’ addiction before throwing it and crushing it to the ground. “I’ll try to smoke less.”

Dan smiled. “Hell yeah, you will.”

-

“Do you want to come over after group today?”

Dan looked up at Phil in surprise, his brown eyes widening slightly. “Are you being serious?”

Phil wavered a little bit, nodding slightly. “I mean, yeah. I’d like to get to know you better outside of church.” 

After all, it’s been three weeks since Phil had started going to Youth Group and he decided that Dan was sort of amazing, even though he was somewhat of a bible nut, which isn’t such a bad thing as Phil was lately finding out. Most religious people he had met were very set in their views, stating that it was their way or no way, but Dan wasn’t like that at all. It was obvious when he didn’t agree with things, but he was generally open to all and every thing. When he didn’t agree with something, he tried to look at things from that person’s perspective so that he could be fully informed where that person was coming from. He had very strong opinions and loved to talk political, which was kind of tiring at times, but he also hated hurting other people and did his best to see the bright side to every situation. 

Phil loved it.

“I would love to,” Dan chuckled, giving Phil a warm grin, making the indent appear in his pale cheek. “Will your parents be okay with it? I mean I’m obviously a bit of a princess.”

Rolling his eyes, Phil snorted and ruffled Dan’s hair because 1) he wasn’t wearing any hair accessories today and 2) Dan’s hair was literally so soft that Phil really just wanted to bury his face into it. “It doesn’t matter what my parents think. And if they do say something about it, I know you well enough by now that you’ll probably quote some bible verse and then go into a long rant about how Jesus would be disappointed in the way they’re acting.”

The brunette laughed, his eyes shining and his voice cracking slightly. “That’s so true, though. I’m glad you understand me, you absolute punk nerd.”

Phil beamed and it was easy to get through group when Dan was there beside him, cracking jokes the entire time and sometimes even repeating some verses completely correctly as the pastor said them. The next minute, they were bustling through the door to Phil’s flat and Phil’s mum was looking at the two quizically. 

“Who’s this?” She asked carefully, looking over Dan with judging eyes that Phil wanted to stab out with a fork. 

“This is Dan,” Phil replied, unable to stop the smile from forming on his face because being with Dan sort of just made that happen. “He’s from church group and we are going to hang out, okay?” 

Her eyes narrowed but she agreed anyways, telling them that dinner was going to be ready in about thirty minutes, which is when Phil knew to expect some critism aimed towards Phil’s guest. He chose to ignore that fact, though, and lead Dan to his room, where the brown haired boy immediately launched onto his bed and took in his surroundings, from the various band posters on Phil’s wall, to the collection of CD’s by his door, to the bookshelf containing hundreds of his favourite books. 

“Cyrano De Bergerac,” Dan read from one of the titles, raising his brow. He crinkled his nose and chuckled. “Doesn’t sound very punk to me.”

“Why do you always say that?” Phil whined, sitting beside him and pouting his lip out, causing Dan to reach up and grab it between his thumb and index finger. 

“Don’t pout or you’ll get wrinkles,” Dan instructed cutely, leaning his head on Phil’s shoulder. His hair tickled Phil’s throat, but he didn’t move in fear that Dan would shuffle away from him. “And I feel like you try to put up this front that you’re very unnapproachable and a bad boy, but really, you’re a kid who’s been broken by his parents enough to try and set up some sort of mask so that you won’t get hurt again. You’re just a nerdy guy who likes Pokemon and reading and likes art enough to engrave it into his skin.”

Phil gaped at him for a few moments, not being able to think of anything to say because of the truth of the words, but he didn’t have to say anything because Dan was then grinning and saying, “Now show me some of your punk music so I can learn how to mosh. My mum doesn’t let me listen to anything other than Christian rock.” And then he launched himself to a standing position while Phil turned on some music.

“No, no, no,” Phil laughed as Dan catapulted into him, knocking him down from the sheer force of the impact. “That is not how you mosh, Dan!” They had landed so that Dan was laying completely on top of Phil, and Phil sort of really wanted to kiss him but he refrained from doing so. 

“Well, maybe I just have a bad teacher,” Dan pouted, allowing Phil to copy his actions from earlier and grasp his bottom lip between his fingers with a cocky, “Don’t pout or you’ll get wrinkles” and letting his lip ping back into place, watching as they turned into a wide smile.

They stared at each other for a moment, and Phil took a while to admire just how beautiful Dan was, and how beautiful everything seemed to be when he was around, and how Phil was absolutely fucked, but his thoughts were interrupted by Dan whispering to him.

“I don’t understand how people can be so disgusted by a man loving another man when it feels so nice.”

Phil’s cheeks turned an ugly shade of red, but he didn’t even have to worry about it because then they were kissing, and Phil couldn’t remember why anyone thought this was a sin, because it didn’t feel like he was sinning. It felt beautiful and made him feel like he was flying, and he never wanted to move because Dan was the most amazing person he has had the pleasure of getting to know like this.

But of course, everything has to come to an end eventually. 

The next moment, Phil’s door was swinging open to reveal Phil’s father, screaming at him to get his ass downstairs right at that moment, and Dan began to shake so badly that Phil had to consider that maybe Dan had a past that was as fucked up as his was. When the got downstairs, Phil sat on the couch, pulling Dan closer to him in a way to comfort him, but it wasn’t really helping when his father looked so murderous.

“You had one chance,” his father started in a voice too calm for his facial expression. “We gave you the chance to be forgiven of your sins as long as you didn’t act upon these homosexual fantasies, and you have disobeyed both of your parents and the Lord. You are a disappointment to your family and God, and I can assure you that you will never see Dan again after this talk is over.” He paused and pressed his thumbs into his temples, and Phil was trying to keep his fury quiet. “I should have known as soon as he walked through our door in frilly pink that he would corrupt our son.”

“Okay, no,” Phil interjected, and he was fuming. Ignoring Dan’s reassuring squeeze of his hand, he started to yell, “actually fuck that. I don’t care if you insult me and tell me how much of a disappointment I am, but as soon as you start insulting Dan, that is NOT okay. Dan is the best fucking person I have ever met and he is a hundred times better than you and mum combined. You think you know the bible? I can assure you that Dan knows it better, being able to quote several bible verses from the top of his head. He’s made me into a much better person, even made me quit smoking as much, and he started to make me actually appreciate religion because I now realize that not every religious person is an utter fucking twat. Obviously, you are not a follower of God if you’re going to act like a couple of children who don’t even accept their own son for being himself. Fuck-.”

Dan cut him off then, and Phil went quiet at the steely look in his eyes, because Dan only got that look in his eyes when he was about to go on a rant, and ranting Dan was pretty intimidating. “‘Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’” He cleared his throat and looked my father straight in the face, the room deadly silent besides the sound of Phil’s mum sobbing in the room over. “John 13:34-35. As you would know if you actually read the bible, one of the biggest rules that is stated over and over again is to love people. It’s even said to love one more than you love yourself. So how dare you think that you are doing a favour to God by casting cruel punishment on your own son when He has said over and over again to love one another. And that does not, in any way, mean that you get to choose who to treat kindly. Any true follower would accept people despite their differences.” 

He walked over and stood right in front of Phil’s dad, and Phil enjoyed the redness of his father’s face more than he should have. “Religion is not an excuse to be a fucking asshole.”

Phil’s mouth dropped because holy shit Dan just went there. That was the realest statement he’d heard all day, and it was fucking beautiful.

“Do you want me to go on?” Dan asked, eyebrow raised, hands on his hips. “Because I can quote more bible quotes for you and I can go on about how God is probably shaking his head at this interaction after saying over and over to love people and accept people and love everyone. You don’t get to pick and choose what you want to follow, and technically, you totally just broke many of His rules. I hope you’re very proud of yourself, and if you want to control Phil like that, well, he’s eighteen, he doesn’t have to put up with this bullshit, and he can always come live with me and my mum, who will be more of a family towards him than you ever were.” He turned around and looked Phil with a smirk that made Phil want to pull him into a heated kiss, and god, Phil thinks he’s in love. “How about we get the hell out of here and go somewhere that doesn’t have such a bad vibe. It’s making me get acne.”

Phil couldn’t stop the grin from taking over his face as he looked at the boy with the pastel clothes and the cute dimple, and he knew he was so lucky to have someone like Dan in his life. “I would love nothing more.” He stood up and grasped Dan’s hand in his, beginning to walk towards the front door, but then pausing to look back at his father who hadn’t moved an inch. “And one more thing, dad, nothing you ever say will make me love myself any less.”

But before he could walk out the door, his mum pulled him into a large hug, her eyes leaking mascara and salt water that made his heart pang because he really does love his mum. “I’m so sorry, Philip,” she whimpered, “Please forgive me, I was wrong for ever thinking I could change you and I didn’t stop to think of how badly I was hurting you. I- it’s hard to be accepting of something when you’ve grown up thinking it was wrong.”

Phil put his hand on her shoulder and brought his lips to her head in a quick kiss. “I love you, mum, so don’t beat yourself up over it. I’m glad you’re trying and I’ll call you later, okay?” He gave her a reassuring smile, watching as she burst into tears again with a string of ‘thank you’s. 

When the door shut behind them, he turned to Dan and kissed him like Dan gave him air to breathe. 

Phil didn’t understand religion, but Dan made it all a bit more bearable and interesting


End file.
